Director: Garry Marshall (Raising Helen, the original
Princess Diaries)
Writers: Meg Cabot (wrote the original, as well as its
novel adaptation)
Gina Wendkos (screenplay for the original, Coyote Ugly)
Shonda Rhimes (wrote the Britney Spears fiasco Crossroads)
Exec. Producer: Ellen H. Schwartz (prolific assistant director of
nearly 40 movies, including Raising Helen, 2002’s The Time Machine, and
Miss Congeniality)
Music: John Debney (has scored a wide range of movies, including The
Passion of the Christ, Welcome to Mooseport, Elf)
Cast in brief: Anne Hathaway (original PD, Ella Enchanted) as Mia
Thermopolis
Julie Andrews (Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music) as Queen Clarisse
Renaldi, “Grandma”
Hector Elizondo (mostly minor roles, as in the stoner comedy How High
and Tortilla Soup) as Joe
John Rhys-Davies (‘Gimli’ in Lord of the Rings, ‘Maximillian P. Arturo,
PH.D’ in the TV show Sliders) as Viscount Mabrey
Callum Blue (‘Mason’ in the TV show Dead Like Me) as Andrew Jacoby
Chris Pine (grandson of veteran B-horror actress Anne Gwynne) as
Nicholas Devereaux
Strengths: acting, direction, music, story
Weaknesses: script, art and set direction, editing
The Hampster’s Rating: 3.5 out of 5 pellets
Synopsis:
For the number of talented, experienced people working on this movie,
you’d expect a lot more. Especially if you saw the first installment,
which proved that the ‘tweenage adventure’ genre can in fact be
charming and quite intelligent. Unfortunately, The Princess Diaries 2:
Royal Engagement plays like the typical obligatory ‘tween’ sequel,
dragging our beloved characters through a rather uninspired hour and
a half of predictable situations, an unnecessary song-and-dance routine
, and several space-filler musical montages. Fortunately, the end of
the movie is more than the typical prince-and-princess fairytale
wedding scene, but this doesn’t quite make up for the other
inadequacies. It’s a fun episode, but not as fun as the original.
"So you see, a spoonful of sugar really does make the medicine go down!"
Plot Summary:
Unfortunately for her – but lucky for us, since without a conflict
there would be no movie – the Genovian parliament/legislature/house of
wigged lords is not prepared to simply hand her the tiara. One of
their number, the grizzled machiavellian Viscount Mabrey, wants his
nephew Nicholas Devereaux to rule Genovia. He calls attention to a
forgotten Genovian law that forbids any woman from ruling without a
husband. Unless Mia gets hitched, Nick will be made king. Mabrey's peers concur, and because
it’s a movie, they give Princess Mia 30 days to find a husband or forfeit her claim.
This is a tweenie, so you can guess what happens. Mia goes through
some rough situations, but in the end finds her Prince Charming and the
self-confidence to serve as queen. There is a royal wedding, though
it’s not what you’d think, thanks to the heavy helping of girl power
required of all modern tweenies. But everything still turns out all
right in the end, leaving us anxious for The Princess Diaries 3.
A Few Questions…
"Yes, your majesty, I do believe that is a freckle, not a mole."
Conclusion and Rating:
I actually found the on-screen chemistry between Mia and her initial
beau, Andrew Jacoby, far more intriguing. The characters just clicked,
in the way we keep hoping Mia and Nick would, but never did. By the
time the two kiss we’re thankful for it, but only because we know
that’s where Marshall has been taking things and its good to have it
finally over. Keeping Mia with Andrew would have also stayed truer to
the soul of the original movie, where Mia chooses a gentle guy with a
good sense of humor over a more popular and studdly jerk. For much of
the second movie Nick is the more popular and studdly jerk, and his
last-minute decision to back out of the race for the crown really
doesn’t redeem him. Why Marshall opted for a standard hollywood
‘paring of the hotties’ when he’s had success with deeper things is
beyond me.
But the tween girls in the theater seemed to like it. And they’re the target audience, after all.
3.5 out of 5 pellets. It’s worth seeing if you liked the original, but you won’t miss anything if you wait for the DVD.
The movie begins more or less exactly where the first left off. Mia
Thermopolis has recently learned that she is heir to the throne of
Genovia, a fictional european principality. She has just graduated
from college, and is now jetting off to Genovia (with kitty companion
Fat Louie) to claim her throne.
I’m still wondering where Genovia is. The first movie gave the
impression that it was perhaps a Mediterranean island, somewhere
between Italy and Spain, with some heavy Greek influence. Now, it
seems, its sandwiched somewhere between France and Germany, but has a
significant Italian flair. Not a big deal, but it would be nice to
know.
If Nick Devereaux was on the scene from the very beginning, then why
didn’t any of this marriage business come up in the first movie? The
only conflict there was with those two rumpled, aging royals we knew
wouldn’t win the day. They make an appearance at the end of this movie
, but only as a comedic afterthought. I guess Grandma Renaldi simply
forgot to mention Nick D., with all that was going on. Corndogs are,
after all, very distracting.
How long has Genovia been independent? Looking at its landscaping and
accoutrements, it seems more a product of the era of Cinderella’s
Castle than that of Prague or Vienna. The rooms in the palace, while
lavish, look more like presidential suites in the Hilton than
apartments for members of a long-reigning royal line. I guess the
royal Genovian sign maker updated all posted lettering with modern
computer fonts in honor of his new queen.
This movie is fun. The cast is pretty to look at for an hour and a
half, and the acting is good. The plot is irritatingly contrived and
the movie tends to drag for the first 20 minutes or so, a result of
some rather lazy editorial choices; but this is a sequel, after all.
And as a sequel, it is a decent one. It lacks the charm of the first,
which is unfortunate, but makes up for it with some welcome character
development. Gary Marshall perhaps should have taken the strongest
elements of the first movie – the relationships between Mia and her
friend Lily, her mother, her grandmother – and taken them to a deeper
level, instead of simply inserting them where necessary to support the
rather dry relationship between Mia and Nick.
